Luffy x isakai Girl

Day 6: Jean

Luffy tapped a beat out on the dash board as Jean drove him to get some hay with her. They had already gotten feed at the feed store, gone back to the house, unloaded the feed, hooked up the flatbed and now they were getting round things. He couldn't remember the word but he knew it was round things of hay.

   "Bales." Jean said for the third time. "Round bales." She rolled her eyes. Sometimes Misaki would forget the words to certain things too, and come up with a roundabout way of describing it. Another way she would deal with it would be to use a nickname like "whosamawhatsit" or "thingamajig". Whenever it was something she liked or was passionate about, she never had that problem. The difference between Luffy and Misaki was that Misaki liked a lot of things, so she usually only used those terms with things she deemed stupid or something insignificant, like a spoon. Luffy, on the other hand didn't care to ever remember a name to something he didn't really care about. And most of the things he cared about were... well.. actually, she didn't know what he cared about.

    "Hey Luffy?"

    "Yeah Momma J?" He said.

     She couldn't help but grin when he called her that. She had been called mom by plenty of kids —friends of her children who just wanted to be buddies with the cool mom. Hell, she had even been called mom by a couple boyfriends of Misaki's who wanted to be in her good graces. But never had she been called momma like how he called her momma. It was like how her own daughter called her momma. It rolled off the tongue naturally, with no intention of making any kind of positive impression. It was just the way he saw her. It really made her feel... good. There wasn't really a word for how it made her feel, but she knew it was good.

"What are some things you like?"

"Things I like? Like my crew?"

"No, those are who's, not things." She said with a chuckle. "What things do you like though? Items, hobbies. Stuff like that."

"I like being free!"

"That's close, but maybe a little too broad."

"Oh." Luffy looked down in his lap. He didn't really know what she was getting at.

"Try something more specific. Do you have any favorite animals?

"Ohhhhh." Luffy grinned, making a cute little snicker sound. "Have you ever heard of an atlas beetle?"

Jean was shocked as Luffy rattled off fact after fact about beetle after beetle. She really took him for an ignoramus to be honest — with all the love in the world, mind you — but it seemed like her theory was right. He had no problem learning, just so long as it was something he liked enough. She wasn't really a fan of beetles, herself, but he was just so excited to talk about it that she let him. She wondered how similar the animals here were to the animals there. He was talking about atlas beetles and Hercules beetles after all, and those exist in this reality. Though she was aware there were bigger, scarier beasts in that reality than there ever would be here.

    Whenever thoughts like that crept up on her, she shook them away. Otherwise, it would lead to anxiety over the fate of her daughter in a world like that. But Misaki had assured her that the friends she had were strong and could protect her from such beasts. The more dangerous thing about that world were the people they had to fight. Aaaaand gotta shake those thoughts off again.

Luffy was still talking about beetles. His enthusiasm was contagious, just like his smile. Jean couldn't help but listen with a big stupid grin on her face as he basically exploded with enthusiasm over some bugs. It almost made her want to go beetle hunting. Almost.